Gartner: “Four IT forces, IT consumerization and new technology styles are forcing IT organizations to see they can’t control IT spending. They must actively manage technology investments inside and outside IT. … This Predicts 2012 special report highlights how the control of technology and technology-driven decisions is shifting out of the hands of IT organizations. New forces that are not easily controlled by IT are pushing themselves to the forefront of IT spending. Specifically, the forces of cloud computing, social media and social networking, mobility and information management are all evolving at a rapid pace. … These technological evolutions in the workplace are largely happening despite the controls IT normally places on the use of technologies. The cloud offers new delivery styles and options that are industrialized in a value chain that renders on-premises IT systems and expertise as only part of the overall delivery of IT capabilities to the company. Social computing is allowing collaboration, and a shift of behavioral patterns of users and the communities in which they work. Mobility offers new access channels to applications and data, and at the same time provides end users with a wide variety of device choices. The combination of cloud, social computing and mobility can be used to increase geographic diversity and raise the productivity of virtual teams. Users expect to get access to personal, work, business applications and data from any device, anytime and anywhere. – Finally, the concept of ‘big data’ is beginning to forever alter the relationship of technology to information consumption, as data coming from multiple federated sources and in structured and unstructured forms must now be analyzed using new methodologies foreign to many IT departments. … As the relationship between ‘technology means’ and ‘technology outcomes’ becomes ever clearer, stakeholders of all kinds are gaining a sharper understanding of how technology decisions will impact the business, and are raising the bar in terms of expectations for success.”

PEJ: “The Tablet Revolution – How people use tablets and what it means for the future of news – Eighteen months after the introduction of the iPad, 11% of U.S. adults now own a tablet computer of some kind. About half (53%) get news on their tablet every day, and they read long articles as well as get headlines. But a majority says they would not be willing to pay for news content on these devices, according to the most detailed study to date of tablet users and how they interact with this new technology. … The survey also finds that three-in-ten tablet news users (defined for this study as the 77% of all tablet users who get news at least weekly) say they now spend more time getting news than they did before they had their tablet. Just 4% say they spend less time while two-thirds (65%) spend about the same amount of time. … Whether people will pay for content, though, still appears to be a challenge, even on the tablet. Just 14% of these tablet news users have paid directly for news content on their tablets. Another 23%, though, have a subscription to a print newspaper or magazine that they say includes digital access. … The study also finds that these early users turn to the internet as their main source for news much more frequently than the public overall, and they have a strong preference for reading and listening to news rather than watching it-again much more than the population overall. Fully 71% of tablet users prefer reading and listening versus 45% of all U.S. adults. … Among the other major findings: The revenue potential for news on the tablet may be limited. Brand is important on the tablet. Substitution is already occurring to large degrees. Incidental news reading is prevalent on the tablet. Those who rely mainly on apps for news, 21% of all tablet news users, represent a kind of power news consumer. Word of mouth is a key component of tablet news sharing. When it comes to ownership, many see the tablet computer as more of a household device to share than as a strictly personal one.”

RWW: “Interestingly enough, 40% of respondents said they used the Web browser to access to news, compared to 21% who exclusively used apps. Many bigger publishers have made developing native apps a priority, believing that they will be easier to monetize than browser-based content. Indeed, some publications have seen an increase in readership after launching HTML5 Web apps than native applications could deliver. – How the native vs. Web app debate will shake out for brands generally is yet to be determined. For the time being, those that can afford should probably invest in building both. According to Pew’s research, 31% of tablet owners use both native and Web apps to consume news.”

pC: “Either way, there is still the overall problem: only 14 percent of tablet users surveyed have paid for news on their tablets. Companies that combine app or online subscriptions with print subscriptions have been able to attract another 23 percent of tablet users to their products, but there is obviously a long way to go.”

VB: “When it comes specifically to news consumption, the results are a mixed bag for media outlets. Yes, tablet owners love consuming news and they gobble it up on the browser and news applications. But, much like the hordes of regular Internet users, tablet owners don’t want to pay for the news they consume on their iPads and Android tablets. A disappointing 14 percent of tablet owners surveyed have paid for news specifically for the tablet. Among those who haven’t already put money down, 21 percent said they would consider paying $5 a month for news while 10% said they would pay $10 a month for news on the tablet.“

ATD: “Facebook will unveil its next massive initiative to socialize the Web at its f8 developer conferenceon Thursday. A key focus of this year’s annual event has been well reported: Content. – And that’s the way the social networking giant will play it at the confab, using the basic phrasing, ‘Read. Watch. Listen.‘ … Many of the implicit and explicit content sharing tools at f8 will have a precedent in those Facebook has built for gaming, according to sources familiar with Facebook’s plans. For instance, look for a live-updating sidebar of friends’ content consumption activity, just as the site offers for games, and separate from the news feed wall.”

TC: “The cat is out of the bag that Facebook is going to launchsomething big at its developer conference f8 this week. We’ve heard about the social music services that could be debuting in a few days, but as the New York Times conveyed this past weekend, Facebook is planning for ways to surface personal content better. And we’ve heard from a source that Facebook will introduce new buttons on the wall that will begin introducing some granularity to the ‘Like’ concept. We’re told these new buttons are ‘Read,’ ‘Listened,’ ‘Watched.’ The network will also soon launch new social commerce buttons like ‘Want‘ following the introductions of the aforementioned buttons.”

RWW: “According to reports, Facebook’s f8 developer conference this coming Thursday will have the motto ‘Read. Watch. Listen.‘ Other than reminding me of a certain tech blog’s name, this motto excites me because of the promise it holds that Facebook will fully embrace multimedia. But that has some major implications, which will affect many in the Web ecosystem. In this post we highlight 3 of the biggest potential implications. … Given my recent posts about the battle between Facebook and Google Plus, the ‘Read, Watch, Listen’ services look set to one-up Google Plus. Although who better to implement their own ‘Watch’ button than the owners of YouTube? Also Google has its own services that cover reading and listening – Google Books, Google Reader, Google Music and others – so they have a great opportunity to integrate all of those into Google Plus.”

RWW: “Facebook’s recent release strategy provides a good road map. Since the release of Google Plus, almost all of Facebook’s new features have been to counter Google’s push into its territory. Those are just reactionary moves, blips in the road. Content is going to be heavily featured at f8 and the true ground shaking updates will be announced this week. … The ‘Read‘ portion of Facebook’s announcement is perhaps the most mysterious. Yet, it has themost precedent in what Facebook has rolled out in previous years and may be tied closely with the platform’s social graph. … Facebook is already one of the top destinations for video on the Web. Most of that is shared content from the likes of YouTube, Vimeo and local news. This is going to be rolled out even further and it will likely to two-pronged – content sharing from outside of Facebook and consumption from within. … While we do not know the specific details of the ‘Listen’ products, we have clues. The primary indicators are MOG, Rdio and Spotify, all of which have been tied to Facebook over the summer. ‘Facebook Music‘ will likely be a conglomeration with MOG, Rdio and Spotify that will allow users to use Facebook as an iTunes-like streaming platform. … What does this all point to? Well, a major profile redesign could possibly be in the works to feature all of this new content. Mashable is reporting that Facebook will announce a redesign at f8 and the idea is to become ‘stickier.'”

Mashable: “Facebook plans to roll out a major redesign of user profiles at its f8 developer conference this week, Mashable has learned. – Details about the redesign are sparse, but two sources familiar with Facebook’s plans (who have asked to remain anonymous) have told us that the redesign is ‘major’ and will make Facebook profiles nexuses for consuming content.

IF: “Strengthening Broad Category Interest targeting could produce big revenue gains for Facebook. As we discussed earlier today, the Facebook Ads marketplace is inaccessible to many small businesses because they don’t have the know-how to effectively use the self-serve tool, or big enough budgets to use many of the tools and services built on the Ads API. As Broad Category Interest targeting is far easier to use than Specific Interest targeting, an improvement of the feature thanks to the ‘Read’, ‘Listened’ and ‘Watched’ buttons could help Facebook recruit this long-tail of advertisers.”

TNW: “Read: Facebook is assumed to be partnering with large online publishers like Yahoo, CNN, the Washington Post andThe Daily. – Watch: The platform will be merging with several online video hosting sites, Ooyala rumored to be one of several. – Listen: Facebook Music is coming with companies like Spotify AB and Rdio Inc. publish user activity on Facebook pages. … The Google+ vs Facebook war seems more heated than ever with Facebook putting up a good fight to maintain its lead in the world of social networking. It remains to be seen how Google+ will keep up with the seemingly impressive features Facebook has up its sleeve, and we can only watch and wait to see how it all turns out.”

GlobalWebIndex: “Social media has reached mass maturity. Today it’s no longer about massive growth but a shift of already active social consumers to ‘real-time’ technologies, such as status updates or tweets. The old view of text-based social media, defined by blogs and forums, is being surpassed, moving the impact of social media, from creating content and publishing to sharing other people’s content and ‘live’ opinions about real-world events. In short ‘real-time’ is re-orientating consumer from creator to distributor and moving the focus to traditional media and professional content. – The open browser-based web is losing out to packaged internet platforms such as mobile apps, internet connected TVs, tablets, e-readers, pc apps, gaming and video platforms. These packaged platforms are re-engineering the internet and destroying the notion of the internet being a singular entity. Crucially for the entertainment revolution, they provide professional media with the means to create sustainable internet business models, something the economics of the browser-based web totally failed to enable. – Professional ‘traditional style’ content is now a core part of the consumer online experience. Internet platforms, for hundreds of millions of consumers, are increasingly the entertainment platform of choice. This is due to continual growth of professional content in video sites (legal and illegal), the rise of ‘real-time’, and the growth of packaged platforms.”

RWW: “The report states that in the new era of social entertainment, traditional media holds the power – a change from the ‘web 2.0’ era, when the user ruled. The report argues that this will lead to a return to passive experiences by consumers. … ‘Professionals are back in the driving seat when it comes to content,’ states the report. This, it says, will lead to the Internet eventually becoming the primary mass entertainment and content delivery platform. – While that is undoubtedly true, it’s difficult to see how the author comes to this conclusion: ‘We as consumers are going back to traditional needs and demands and seeking a more passive experience.’ – The report explains that social entertainment is far more about content sharing, than creation. It goes on to suggest that this ‘light nature of interaction’ is moving the consumer back to the passive state they were in before the Internet came along. Further, that services like Facebook and Twitter turn consumers into ‘distributors.’“

Time: “The dream of Web 2.0 may be over. If a new report on internet usage is to be believed, social media has turned the internet into more of a passive experience again. … The change, the report suggests, is that social media is more about content sharing than content creation, turning users into passive consumers – or, worse, distributors – of others’ work. … Instead of a shift back towards professional/audience mode, this feels more like a blip as the landscape gets used to its new tools than anything else to me, but what do you think?”